skilful conduct of the negotiation (Strype, Annals, ii. i. 363). He was more than once sent as ambassador to the Netherlands to treat with Don John of Austria with regard to the protestant subjects of Spain, and to remonstrate against the injurious treatment of English merchants trafficking with the Low Countries (ib. ii. ii. 9, 10, iii. ii. 559; cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. App. 2nd Rep. p. 97). His services were rewarded by his being knighted at Westminster in 1577, and on 19 Sept. of the same year he was made a privy councillor, and had a license for selling wine granted him, which roused the opposition of the mayor of Guildford and others (ib. App. 7th Rep. p. 634). In November 1580 he entertained the Portuguese ambassador magnificently at his house in the Isle of Wight, though, as he tells Cecil, as many as forty of his household were ‘down with the disease’ at the time. He himself fell sick, but recovered. The plague increased, and in 1583 Horsey died of it at the manorhouse of Great Haseley in Arreton, Isle of Wight, where he lived and ‘kept a brave house’ with one Mrs. Dowsabell Mills, a rich widow, ‘not without some tax of incontinency, for nothing stopt their marriage but that he had a wife, a Frenchwoman, alive in France’ (Oglander, Memoirs, pp. 81, 193). He was buried in Newport Church, where a monument was erected to him, with an effigy in armour under a marble canopy, painted and gilded, and a laudatory Latin epitaph. His government of the Isle of Wight in critical times, when the Spaniards were seeking to seize it in order to make it the headquarters of their predatory attacks, was vigilant and energetic, despite the connivance at piracy with which it was tainted. According to Worsley ‘he kept the island in a proper state of defence, and lived in perfect harmony with the Isle of Wight gentry.’ Oglander gives him the character of ‘a brave soldier, but assuming too much.’ He was an ardent lover of field sports, and did much to increase the stock of game in the island, giving, it is said, a lamb for every live hare brought in.
[Worsley's Hist. of the Isle of Wight, p. 90; Camden Soc. Miscellanies, vi. 29; Oglander's Memoirs, pp. 81, 193; Froude's Hist. of England, vi. 435, vii. 154, 437, ix. 538, xi. 61; Cal. State Papers, Dom. (Lemon); Strype's Annals, ii. i. 28, 363, ii. 9–10, 314, iii. ii. 559.]
HORSEY, Sir JEROME (fl. 1573–1627), traveller, was son of William Horsey, who was probably brother of George Horsey of Digswell in Hertfordshire, and of Sir Edward Horsey [q. v.], governor of the Isle of Wight. In 1573 Jerome Horsey set out for Moscow as a clerk in the service of the Russian company. In 1576 Sylvester, the accredited English envoy in Russia, was disabled by a stroke of lightning; no successor was appointed, and when, in 1580, the Czar (Ivan-Vasilovitch) desired to purchase munitions of war in England, he selected Horsey to undertake the business, and sent him to England with ‘a message of honor, weight, and secraecie … to the Quens Majesty of England,’ ‘perceavinge’ (Horsey explains) ‘I had ateyned to the familliar phrase of his language the Pollish and Dutch tongs.’ A journey, at the time, on such a mission, across the continent was dangerous, and Horsey took elaborate precautions to conceal his despatches and his money. After many adventures he arrived in London by way of Hamburg, and was introduced by his kinsman, Sir Edward Horsey, to the queen, who made him one of her esquires of the body. Horsey also made the acquaintance of Walsingham, and was well received by the Russia Company. In 1581 he sailed to Russia with the necessary stores ‘in company of 13 talle shipps,’ beating off on the voyage a Danish fleet near the North Cape. The Czar Ivan died in 1584. The new czar, Feodor (crowned in June 1584), was under the influence of his ambitious brother-in-law, Prince Boris Fedorovitch, who was friendly to Horsey, but was hostile to Sir Jerome Bowes [q. v.] (the ambassador from England since 1583). Bowes and Horsey had no liking for each other, but Horsey contrived to get Bowes safely out of the country. In August 1585 he was sent to England by the czar, with official despatches addressed to Elizabeth, in which complaint was made of Bowes's conduct, of the company's method of trading, and of Elizabeth's treatment of the czar's previous messenger, Beckman. On the journey, in accordance with directions from his patron, Prince Boris, Horsey betrayed Maria, niece of the late czar and widow of the Duke of Holstein, into the hands of her enemies. The lady, who was taking refuge in Riga, was persuaded by Horsey to return to Russia, and was there imprisoned, with her daughter, in the nunnery of Troitza. ‘This pece of service’ (Horsey wrote) ‘was verie acceptable; whereof I much repent me.’ On his arrival in England Horsey was welcomed by Elizabeth, despite Bowes's unprincipled efforts to injure his credit. He collected lions, bulls, and dogs, and the like, to take back with him, and set out for Russia on 5 April 1586. He had been commissioned to procure in the czarina's behalf some woman skilled in the cure of barrenness, but mistaking his instructions he took out a midwife, and
